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T PAYS TO STEAL by Maury Wills

T PAYS TO STEAL

By

Pub Date: May 20th, 1963
Publisher: rentice-Hall

Maury Wills can run, hit, field and steal bases-- talents that don't help out at the typewriter. Wills is the baseball star who broke Ty Cobb's record for bases stolen and did for baseball what Cassius Clay is doing for boxing-- he made people, who wouldn't ordinarily bother, watch the game just to see what he would do. Wills on playing the game, on base stealing and reporting games he's been in is standard baseball-interview material. His ventures into his own earnest conception of theology, touching as they may be, do not deserve the light of print, e.g. ""Perhaps the Giants, for instance, in the play-off game at the end of the 1962 season, were with Him a little more than we were. May be that's the reason they won."" He has nothing new or insightful to say about baseball related topics-- Little League, the problems of the Negro in major league sports, the future of the game as a sport and a business-- and it's unfortunate that he did not stay away from these topics altogether. It would have allowed a shorter, standard baseball autobiography (with all the shortcomings that implies).